Answer the questions. Question the answers.

The Painful Solitude of the Red Pill

I have recently been studying the “Red Pill” community, and I have been struck by how sad their philosophy is. They do not seem to believe in the existence of the kinds of love that I cherish the most.

To describe Red Pill beliefs, I shall be mainly referencing Illimitable Man’s Red Pill Constitution, because it is (in my opinion) a well-organized, well-written, and representative sample of the thinking that defines the community and their philosophy. If you disagree with my assessment, please let me know.

Consulting the document, we find the following statements:

“Woman’s love is based on adoration, adoration is a combination of admiration and respect, respect is derived from power. Thus it follows that you must be powerful if you want to be loved, or you will never be loved. You will be held in contempt for being weak.”

“A man seeking pity is despised for his weakness rather than helped because of it…”

“[A] man who confides his weaknesses to a woman all but signs his own death sentence… And so to complain to a woman, no matter how earnestly nor passionately, is for a man to engage in an exercise of most profuse folly. Truly then it stands to reason that the indulgence and open sharing of emotion is a strictly feminine privilege, something a man cannot engage in should he wish to remain respectable to his woman.”

“To be strong does not necessarily mean to be emotionally impervious, if there is anyone who will support a man through his darkest moments, it will in all likelihood be another man… Women feel revulsion when observing male weakness and exploited when a man depends on them. Unlike men, women have no provider instinct; they are all too willing to rely, but greatly hesitant to be relied upon.”

“If you are weak, depressed, small, poor, uneducated, unconfident, or anything else that prevents you from being powerful, nobody will care about whether you live or die.”

I could go on, but these will suffice. I picked these phrases for two reasons:

They portray a world where men can hardly turn to anyone for help when they feel overwhelmed, and where they certainly can’t get any help from the women they love.

They directly contradict my own experience.

In 2015, I had a psychotic break. I was in an accelerated graduate school program that would have given me a master’s degree, a teaching certificate, and a two-year job contract, and I was on track to fail, leaving me with no degree, no job, and a pile of debt. The stress broke me, and I developed severe anger issues; I truly wanted to kill anyone who inconvenienced me in any way, including my own daughter. The rational part of my brain was quite horrified by these new thoughts I kept having, and so I sought out my mental health provider and basically begged them to lock me up for my family’s safety. They did; I was sent to mental hospital for an indefinite stay.

My wife could have divorced me right there. I was, by my own admission, a threat to her and to our only child. I couldn’t get a degree or hold down a part-time job. I was a wreck. I couldn’t have held it against her if she had left me in that hospital and sought out someone else. Who would have blamed her for doing so?

But she never left me. She stayed by me as I regained control of my mind, and thanks to her, both of my stays in mental hospitals were very short ones. In my darkest hour, she was my greatest source of strength, and thanks to her, today I am a free man with a decent job and the respect of my peers. She saved me when I could not save myself. (Incidentally, I get emotional whenever I hear “Locked Away”, because I found out the hard way that the answer is yes, she would still love me the same. I count myself a fortunate man.)

And so when I read this constitution saying that men can’t afford to be seen as weak and that women will never help you when you’re down, I just can’t believe it, and I wonder why the writer believes it, not to mention all of his readers who believe it, too. Has no one ever helped them? Have they never known love? Do they think it’s just a delusion?

But this is not the end of my disagreement with the red pillers. Consider these next few statements from the same constitution:

“Women are irrational and inconsistent, they have a capacity for logic but they are not typically inclined to utilise it.”

“Women want male friends because they’re better company. More interesting, more entertaining, less crazy, less annoying – all of that good stuff.”

“Legitimate female friends, women you find unattractive and are interesting are rare, because most women have no personality.”

“If you are ever in a situation where you’re stuck with women and bored out of your mind (you will be) the best way to make things interesting is to mock them. The only way women become interesting is if you tease them, call them out and be generally combative. Otherwise you’ll be bored, asking yourself why you’re with a gaggle of women when you’d have more fun reading the world’s least interesting book.”

Good gods, man, haven’t you ever met any interesting women? I’ve met a lot of interesting women in my life, from the Spanish-language tutor who learned ultimate tic-tac-toe from me and then proceeded to beat me and everyone else in our department at the game, to my sister who got a master’s degree in geological engineering and traveled the world solving rock-related problems, to my fellow high school student who was my first real exposure to atheism. And while there are many, many women who I would describe as uninteresting, I don’t find them to be more numerous than uninteresting men, who are also in abundant supply. And while I’m saying nice things about women, I’ll mention my wife again. I married her because I consider her my intellectual equal, and I value her advice. I’ve been able to turn to her when I desperately needed good counsel (like when I stopped believing in God and wasn’t sure what to do next) and when I just wanted to idly philosophize (like when we debated over whether or not Voldemort is portrayed in the novels as a sexual being). Having an interesting spouse is wonderful; everyone should get one.

But it appears that some people have given up on even that. The red pillers will never find an interesting woman, just as they will never find a loyal and supportive woman, because they aren’t even looking. No use looking for what isn’t there, right? I only wish I could tell them that love is real, and that it’s possible to find a soulmate, someone who understands you, who can be strong when you are weak, who challenges you to become smarter and stronger and better, and who also enjoys having sex with you. But I don’t think they’ll listen to me. How would I know anything? I took the wrong pill.